Leader of murderous Jamaican drug gang gets 28-year sentence

MIAMI -- The leader of a Jamaican drug gang blamed for 1,400 killings at the height of the 1980s cocaine wars was sentenced under a plea deal Tuesday to 28 years in prison.

U.S. District Judge Norman Roettger accepted the plea deal for Vivian Blake, but rejected a prosecution recommendation that he take off half the six years Blake was jailed in Jamaica while fighting a U.S. warrant.

"It would be the first time I've ever heard of that,'' said Roettger, who has been a federal judge for 28 years. "I don't know whether a U.S. District Court has the power to do that, and I'm not going to do it.''

Defense attorney David Rowe called the credit for Jamaican prison time "an integral part of the plea agreement'' but did not sway the judge.

Blake, 45, was on the FBI's "Most Wanted'' list for more than a decade. He originally faced eight murder charges and drug counts carrying a possible sentence of 398 years in prison and $15.5 million in fines. No fine was imposed and federal prosecutors agreed to drop the murder charges because they had no evidence directly linking Blake to the killings.

Blake is cooperating with U.S. investigators but no cases have been built on his statements, said prosecutor Lee Stapleton Milford.

"I've come here today with a burden-free conscience,'' Blake told the judge. "I was given a chance to come clean and speak the truth, which I did.''

Blake said his background living in poverty in the United States as an orphan and illegal alien trying to support three brothers, a sister and a grandmother exposed him "to a lot of temptation.''

"The end results were terrible. I lost. I separated myself from my two kids,'' he said. "I have some solid words for the kids out there: Crime does not pay.''

Blake's son, Duane, 21, requested a "merciful sentence'' based on his father's poor health with a heart condition, diabetes and high blood pressure and aid to the Jamaican community. Rowe said Blake ran a charity for the poor in his native Tivoli Gardens neighborhood in Kingston, Jamaica.

Blake helped smuggle 1,000 tons of cocaine into the United States and distributed it nationally and into Canada, prosecutors said.

The posse began as a marijuana smuggling operation and expanded into cocaine in the 1980s as crack addicts devoured a new form of the drug, while various drug gangs or "posses'' waged wars over turf and distribution rights. The usual courier into the United States was a woman flying with luggage holding 100 pounds of drugs.

Blake evaded arrest in the United States by sailing to Jamaica on a cruise ship. He was taken into custody there in 1994 and was returned to the United States last year. Blake, who considers himself a screenwriter, playwright and poet, was interviewed by GQ magazine while awaiting extradition.